Check scanning service?

Claire Closson

Hello! I'm looking for some advice from the community. We currently process all of our gifts manually and are interested in exploring check scanning services.

If your organization uses a check scanning service, which company do you use? Are you happy with the service, including the accuracy, efficiency, and overall results?

I'd greatly appreciate any recommendations, insights, or lessons learned. Thank you so much for your help! I look forward to you thoughts. I'm trying to find a service that integrates well with RE.

Carlene Johnson

@Prenger Solutions - do you have any insight to share?

Claire Closson

Oh, I didn't think to ask @Prenger Solutions - thank you! Who would you recommend?

Carlene Johnson

PSG has a webinar coming up that will probably be helpful: https://prengersolutions.com/webinar/scanlines-lockboxes-gift-processing/

Penelope Bill

We are a small Mission and currently use AQ2. It works very well for us. You may wish to see if they would be a good fit for you. If nothing else, the staff is very nice and responsive.

Evan Webb

Claude Cowork can do this for you. I put together a workflow there that has Claude read a bulk scan of direct mail remit slips & checks. It extracts all the data, and allows the user to go one by one and see the extracted data next to scan of the check & remit slip. From there the user can review, edit if needed, & approve each gift. At the end it outputs a CSV ready for import into RE. I'm still fine-tuning this since I just put together on a whim in an hour last week, but I estimate this will drop our mail processing time by 80% while keeping a human in the loop.

Carlene Johnson

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/315438#Comment_315438

I'd love to learn more about this. Do you use Claude integrated with RE or as a standalone. What can you share about security, donor privacy, etc… for orgs who may have concerns about AI and security?

Evan Webb

@Carlene Johnson I should clarify this has only reached a proof-of-concept stage for us, so it's not currently in active use. We have a Claude Teams subscription, which means none of our data is used for training models, and everything sent to them is encrypted and not accessible outside our organization. That said, I am not planning to put this into active use until I have more clarity on the security & regulatory implications. I think it's mostly interesting to consider what world AI is enabling and how it could transform how we do business.

Carlene Johnson

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/315444#Comment_315444

Keep us posted! I'd love to learn how this works out if you get to full usage. I agree that it could be a valuable tool!

Claire Closson

@Evan Webb - Wow. That's really interesting! That could change a lot in the check processing world!

Claire Closson

@Penelope Bill - Yes, I have heard of them. I'm glad to hear to it works well for you. I run moderate sized appeal with a large number of checks to process. These level of check entering is not sustainable! I'm hoping to find a solution that integrates well with Raiser's Edge.

Penelope Bill

AQ2 works great with RE. All you have to do it go in and approve the batch (no importing). Hope you find something you like :).

Greg Burton

@Claire Closson We have been using AQ2 since 2018. We're quite happy with them.